Utah Court Strips Criminal of Right to Counsel, and Some Lawyers Object

DENVER — For David M. Corbett, a lawyer in Salt Lake City, the breaking point came when his client, a white supremacist convicted of murdering a prison officer, began threatening him, then managed to learn Mr. Corbett’s home address and mailed him an envelope of legal papers. Mr. Corbett, rattled, asked to be taken off the case.

The Utah Supreme Court agreed, but it went a big step further in an unusual ruling that added an asterisk to one of the bedrock rights of America’s legal system. The court said that the defendant, Curtis Allgier, had behaved so badly with so many court-appointed lawyers that he had forfeited his right to counsel as he appealed his murder conviction.

“Forfeiture is a drastic measure,” the court wrote in a ruling handed down Friday. But it said that in this case, it was justified in cutting off his access to public defenders: “Mr. Allgier has made a series of threats to multiple appointed appellate attorneys.”

In recent years, public defenders’ groups have raised concerns about growing strains in a system that provides court-appointed lawyers to poor defendants. They say that caseloads are growing unmanageable, that people sometimes wait for months to meet with a lawyer, and that many low-level criminal defendants appear in court without the benefit of counsel.

The case in Utah shows the problems court-appointed lawyers can also face as they try to represent someone who is mercurial and hostile, even a threat.

Over the years, courts have ordered disruptive defendants to leave their own trials and have appointed lawyers to help protect the interests of erratic defendants who insist on serving as their own lawyers. They have also confronted questions of how to respond when clients assault or threaten their lawyers or urge them to act unethically.

And while stripping away someone’s right to a lawyer is not unprecedented, legal experts said, it is a drastic step that some lawyers argue flies in the face of the Constitution.

“Utah is not the first court to grapple with this issue,” Jo-Ann Wallace, the president of the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, said in an email. “However, because the right to counsel is so fundamental to protecting other rights, other courts have been reluctant to find forfeiture, even when there have been significant threats.”

Mr. Corbett said it was only the second time he had sought to be relieved of defending someone.

“Every public defender has had a client become upset,” he said. “I’ve had plenty of clients call me a public pretender and a public offender and say all sorts of terrible things to me.” But this, he said, “is exceptionally rare.”

Mr. Allgier, whose face is a green mask of neo-Nazi tattoos, charted a bloody path to reach this point.

He had been serving a state prison sentence for burglary and forgery in June 2007 when he complained of back pain and was taken for an examination at the University of Utah. After being unshackled for a magnetic resonance imaging scan, he grabbed a gun from Stephen Anderson, the corrections officer who had been escorting him, fatally shot Officer Anderson and escaped from the hospital. He stole a car and led the police on a chase before being caught later that day at an Arby’s restaurant.

Officer Anderson, 60, was described in memorial commendations as a “quiet and gentle” corrections officer who was well liked and respected by inmates and colleagues, and had stayed on the job even after becoming eligible to retire. He had raised horses, and one of his children described him as irreplaceable on the day that his killer was sentenced.

To avoid the death penalty, Mr. Allgier pleaded guilty to murder in 2012 and was sentenced to life in prison without any possibility of parole. He is trying to withdraw that plea.

The ruling from the Utah Supreme Court describes how Mr. Allgier burned through lawyers as his case worked its way through the legal system. The Salt Lake Legal Defender Association made multiple requests to withdraw from representing him. After that, he “apparently became dissatisfied with his new counsel,” the court said, and asked to represent himself.

A new lawyer was appointed to represent him during appeals, and less than a month later, that lawyer asked to withdraw, citing an “irreparable breakdown” in their relationship. Mr. Allgier had suggested that “it would get very ugly” if the lawyer did not withdraw.

The pattern repeated itself with two new lawyers, including Mr. Corbett: Mr. Allgier lodged a barrage of complaints against them and tried to have them removed.

“NEVER will they have the honor of being in my Aryan GOD presence or having any kind of contact with me period!” he wrote, in what the court described as a series of “scathing and hostile” rebukes of his own lawyers.

Mr. Corbett has worked as a public defender for five years and said he had sometimes encountered resentment and anger from clients. Mr. Allgier, he said, was upset with the brief that Mr. Corbett had submitted on his behalf, and with the team’s general approach to the case.

“He became upset with me when we filed the opening brief, and that’s when he became aggressive,” Mr. Corbett said. He told Mr. Corbett he knew how to reach people “on the outside.” A few weeks later, an envelope from him arrived at Mr. Corbett’s home. Mr. Corbett said he had never told Mr. Allgier where he lived.

“That’s when I said, ‘I’m out,’ ” he said. Mr. Corbett and his legal partner withdrew.

After all that, he said, he disagreed with the Utah Supreme Court’s conclusion that Mr. Allgier had effectively given up his right to have a lawyer represent his arguments over issues relating to the timing of his attempt to withdraw his guilty plea.

“It needs to be decided on the merits,” he said. “It needs to be done the proper way.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Utah Court Strips Criminal of Right to Counsel, and Some Lawyers Object. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe